Posts on Shaddy's

Prodding Wise Wizards – Prompt Injection in Gandalf's Game

Thu, 20 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

If you’re following AI news and discussions, you might have heard about that little game with Gandalf trying to protect a password. Your goal as the player is to trick the poor AI into revealing its secrets, no matter the cost. The game is intended to teach about the concept of Prompt Injection and to spread awareness of some weaknesses of LLMs (Large Language Models). Honestly, it’s a lot of fun, and I want to share some of the interesting and hilarious things I have come across in the attempts of friends and myself. I will end on some background and some personal musings about the implications and the future.

Divisibility Rules

Tue, 04 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In my post on The Divisible Numbers Challenge, I mentioned a trick for determining in your head whether a number is divisible by 4. A friend told me that that note was silly because everybody learns that stuff in primary school, which surprised me. While I did learn about it in primary school, for some reason, I never realised that it’s probably common knowledge. Of course, I was aware that some things are taught pretty much universally. For example, I assume almost everybody knows about long division, even if most people probably have it grow rusty from disuse. I guess I just always assumed that divisibility rules are kind of a niche topic that never comes up. It seemed like one of those factoids ¹ that you can bring up to surprise people. But even still, maybe it is as uncommon as I believed, or maybe a reader finds themselves among the lucky 10,000 because their school didn’t cover it, they missed it, or for some other reason I could never even guess at..

My Content Consumption Pipeline: Efficient Information Management

Sun, 25 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Are you overwhelmed by the vast amount of content on the internet? Do you struggle to decide what to read while drowning in a sea of information without even remembering what you’ve read before? Or maybe you already know what you want to read by following a couple of places you know produce great content, but you’re not sure how to keep track of them all? It’s so much work to check on all the things regularly, and so you forget and abandon?

Habitual Micro Exercises

Tue, 23 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

When I was a kid, maybe around 10 years ago, and my father and I were readying for some trip I don’t remember, I noticed something weird. My father was just standing there on one leg, the other pulled close to his body, high in the air, like a flamingo. Balancing, yet stable as a rock, his fingers skittering across his raised foot, he tied his shoe in seconds.

The Divisible Numbers Challenge

Wed, 10 May 2023 00:00:00 +0000

After recently having handed in my Master’s Thesis for my Computer Science Degree, I have found myself looking for a job. In IT, it is not uncommon to have a technical interview about solving some algorithmic problem while talking the interviewer through your thought process. There’s a huge industry around sites like LeetCode just to prepare for this prospect.

One company I interviewed with was RIIICO. They’re a start-up that seeks to improve factory planning through interactive 3D scans. The interview process was nice, and I feel like I got along well with the team. They provided me with an interview challenge that stuck with me. Maybe it’s because it was the only actual LeetCode-style interview I had, but there are some really interesting aspects to the problem.

Hello World

Sun, 14 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Hello World

An empty blog would look a little strange.
But I’ve decided it’s time. No point just letting it sit on my hard drive.
So here we go. My blog is out.
Maybe there will be content in the future.